News and controversies surrounding Tron, one of the most talked about projects in the blockchain space, never ends. The price of Tron’s native token TRX is solid above 2.5 cents as a growing list of major cryptocurrency exchanges announces support for BitTorrent (BTT) airdrops for TRX holders, while a Chinese blockchain rating agency warned crypto investors about TRX price manipulation on January 21.

BitTorrent, the world’s leading file-sharing peer-to-peer platform which was acquired by Tron last year, announced in early January that it was set to launch Tron-based native token BTT which will enable users to exchange tokens to improve network speed.

Justin Sun, founder and CEO of Tron, said on Twitter on Jan.20 the first airdrop of BTT to the TRX holders would start on February 11th,2019. The initiative will last until 2025. By far, more than ten major crypto exchanges and digital asset wallet providers, including Binance, OKEX,Huobi and Huobi Wallet, Gate.io, Bithumb, Bitpie Wallet, have announced their support for the BTT airdrop.

The BTT airdrop is gaining a lot of attention from the crypto community, and boosts the price of the ninth largest crypto by market cap. TRX is currently trading at $0.026, up 1.4 percent over the last 24 hours, according to coinmarketcap.

Neverthless, former senior executives of BitTorrent distance themselves from controversial Tron and cast doubt over BTT token’s future. Bram Cohen, who created BitTorrent took to Twitter on Monday, saying “I’m no longer in any way affiliated with BitTorrent and have never been affiliated with Tron or Justin Sun”. Simon Morris, who formerly served as chief strategy officer at BitTorrent, claimed in a recent interview that there was “no way” Tron’s network would be able to handle BitTorrent’s transactional capacity.

Market Manipulation on TRX?

Although TRX continues its robust performance since the start of the year, Stand & Consensus, China-based blockchain rating agency warned crypto investors Tuesday about high risks associated with trading TRX as TRX market shows obvious signs of being manipulated.

Tronics Support Plan, released by Tron Foundation last year with the purpose of increasing adoption of TRX, would lead to the concentration of tokens in hands of few Tron Whales, making it easier for them to manipulate the TRX price, according to the rating agency’s latest report.

The report stated that the turnover rate of TRX soared in January, and in particular the figure reached as high as 56.47% on January 10, 2019, signaling that frenetic trading activities increased speculative risks. Further, TRX was up by nearly 30% on Jan.10 when most of other cryptocurrencies suffered price crash . The report said it looked like a pump and dump scheme when there were few positive fundamental factors supporting a sudden and sharp surge in TRX price at the time.

TRX’s trading volume gradually falls, and the bullish sentiment has reached a lull, which will possibly trigger TRX’s price drop, the report concluded.

Tron has a long way to go to quell mounting criticism of its overhyped marketing strategy with little substance.